Before I forget...

I knew there was something I was forgetting. Something nagging me all night. It was this. This post. Only remembered it twenty seconds ago. I've got nothing. Nadda. Zip. Zilch. Zero. I guess I could fill out the rest of this with other words for nothing but I can't be bothered thinking of them or looking them up.

Doctor Who had an excellent start to the new series with Smith and Jones, which was a brilliant introduction for a new companion and a very good episode with some nice twists in the plot. Spotted at least two references to Mr Saxon, the arc word for the new series.

I'm willing to bet that that paragraph was utter gibberish to a lot of people, or at least anyone outside the UK. Doctor Who is one of those things that has never really taken off except on our little isle. It has fan communities and viewers across the globe but nowhere is it quite so mainstream.

Oddly enough, most of the fan films on Youtube are American, as far as I can tell. They also have a tendency to be terrible. Still, they're fan films so that's to be expected. I'm giving them a shot at the very least, there seem to be a few ongoing series that have garnered some support.

Strangely, although I'm rushing this and I only thought of it late, I'll probably still be posting earlier than usual, if only by a few minutes. I blame it on the fact that I got out of bed at noon today and my internal rhythm is completely out of whack.

Like I said, nothing much else to say. Wish I could have some wonderful insight to round off every day, but, as the last month and tonight have proven, I can't.

Can't even think of a title

So, I'm sitting here at 10 past 11 waiting for inspiration to strike.

That's actually a very odd phrase when you think about it. “Striking” as a general rule is something violent. It's something lightening does. It would seem to imply that inspiration comes in a short, sharp bursts, looks really impressive and burns your eyebrows off.

I reckon I can do without inspiration for one night. I've been doing well enough for the past, what, 28 days? I mean, here I am, 28 Days Later (do you see what I did there?), and I haven't felt particularly inspired but I've written stuff anyway. I don't think I've ever felt inspired, by anything.

But that's probably just the sleep deprivation talking. I need to get more of that. Sleep. Not sleep deprivation. Yeah, I intend to spend all of tomorrow asleep, making up for the lack of sleep over the last school term, then spend all of Sunday asleep in order to prepare for the oncoming weeks of studying.

I'll probably wake up sometime on Saturday evening to watch the start of the new Doctor Who series. More on that tomorrow, or maybe Sunday if I can bring myself to post early tomorrow. Oh, who am I kidding, more on that tomorrow.

Old Habits Die Hard: Vendetta

Never watch half an episode of House on DVD then watch a new one on TV then come back and try to finish watching that first one. Won't work. I know, I'm doing it now. No idea who's dying of what. Then again, it's before the second ad break, so neither do any of the doctors.

Sooooooo..... topic.

Well, somebody asked me a couple of days ago, while I was watching Life of Brian (on my GP2X, great little thing), if I listen to music at all. I had to say that I really didn't. I don't listen to music as a form of recreation, I don't even have any real music playing device. I've got a CD player, used for listening to either The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Sherlock Holmes audio books or cassettes of old radio shows (long story). I use iTunes mostly for listening to the odd podcast and general audio stuff. As was established by today's Maths lesson and the examination of my binary watch therein, I'm a technology geek. Which makes it kind of surprising that I don't have a mobile phone or an iPod.

The lack of phone probably corresponds to a lack of a social life, but I don't have an iPod because I don't listen to music. I've got my GP2X or a Pocket PC if I want to watch movies or view images. If I did get an iPod, I'd get one of the older ones cheap and install some version of Linux on it, just because I could.

For some reason, I just don't listen to music by itself, as a way of entertaining myself. I'll listen to pretty much whatever comes on the radio in the morning, assuming the DJ doesn't just keep talking about himself and celebrity gossip for twenty minutes. However, I'll be looking out the window the whole time. I'll listen to some game or movie soundtracks, something catchy, but only while I pace around the room thinking about something else.

I just can't concentrate on music by itself. Some kind of audio with discussion, or a story to tell, I'll listen to. I just need to be watching something as well. And even then, I'll be listening to one thing, watching another and sometimes concentrating on something completely different. I'll play Tetris while watching TV, heck, I've got some of my best high scores while doing that. I got my CD player the same Christmas I got my Xbox, so I used to play through most of Halo while listening to the Hitchhiker's Guide.

I just don't get engaged on any intellectual level by music, I don't find it enjoyable to listen to by itself. I'm probably a visually-oriented individual or something like that.

Anyway, since I didn't stick to yesterday's timing and it's currently pretty damned late, I'll just make a few final points.

One, that Maths lesson I mentioned earlier. Last lesson on the last day of term. Nothing productive ever going to happen there but it was a laugh. It's that kind of stuff that I miss most over holidays, just sitting and chatting with people while I'm supposed to be working.

Also, Die Hard: Vendetta, as referenced in today's title, which also refers to my return to late night posting, is a rather good first person shooter, one which I picked up second hand for only a couple of pounds for the Gamecube. One of the levels, set in a prison, requires some really finnicky stealth but other than that, it's a very solid experience. Just thought I'd share that with you.

New Word Thursday: 'Geinstilating'

Geinstilating [Gain-still-ateing]
adverb
1. The leg movement associated with a need to exit a conversation. Body language to indicated one's need to leave a conversation or place. Commonly recognized as leg movements in the direction of an exit, or hip swivels in that said direction.
Also: Geinstilate & Geinstilator
''Whenever we talk, she geinstilates, and just plain leaves after that."
"Yeah not looking forward to this interview, I'm going to have to geinstilate out of there!"

ORIGIN Modern English : Derived from 'Bein' German for leg ('gein') and ('stilating') is derived from the word gesticulate.

Late evening FTW!!!

Trying something new today. I call it “writing before 10 o'clock at night”, which is a change from my usual strategy but I'm in a good mood. I'm in a good mood for a couple of reasons. The first is that I just knocked off the first section of a Computing past paper with ease and speed. That seems weird but when you've spent the day struggling to comprehend a writer's doubtless deep and complex motives for using a comma, it's kind of nice to know that there's something in the world that you actually understand.

The second reason relates to last night's post: at precisely 19:26 this evening, I finally remembered what I was going to blog about yesterday. At least, I think I did. It doesn't seem as brilliant as it did then, probably because it's closer now and we idolise what we can't have, etc., etc. Point is, I can't be entirely certain and that nagging little doubt will haunt me till the day I die... or for the next fifteen minutes, whichever comes first.

The school recently upgraded it's filtering software for the ol' intertubes. Before, they had something from Symantec that occasionally got in the way of LICD and the odd Flash game site (we found others), plus Google Image Search was blocked (Klingon Google FTW! Well, actually we used the Australian one, but I just wanted to used that phrase). It was a pain occasionally but we never had much of a problem with it.

As I said, they recently upgraded it. Something by Redstone, or so the error messages tell me. It may just be a bizarre series of coincidences, but we ran up against that filter about three or four times during the course of one Computing lesson. We weren't necessarily looking at Computing related pages, and I'm not including the guy who sits behind me actively searching for porn, but everyone aside from that guy hadn't had so many problems before.

The first page that we noticed was blocked was Joystiq, which is sort of related to computers. This happened a few times with the old software, but that at least loaded most of the page until it found the nasty old swear words, or what have you.

Next up, Wikipedia. Main page completely off limits. At first, we wondered if the whole site had been blocked, since we knew from checking the school's IP's talk page that there had been problems with vandalism. Anyway, turns out it was simply that day's Featured Article. That's right, a book on witchcraft. I don't know if it was the school that added those terms to the list or if they came as part of the default but you have to love the mentality behind it.

Employees not getting their work done? Pupils acting aggressively? Bad behaviour rampant? That's not just the internet doing that. It's WITCHCRAFT!!!

Nobody expects the Redstone filtering software!!!!

I'd call that just a little bit overzealous. I've scanned the article and can't find anything else which might justify blocking and I can distinctly recall spending several weeks examining the historical trials of witches back when I did History. In the sixteenth century. Kind of sucks if you need to research that, huh?

Of course, the thing that worries me most is, what if it's not the filters being overzealous? What if my friends and I are just being morally underzealous?




Had you going there for a second, didn't I? Nah, it's somebody else's fault.

I would have had a great title, too

AAAAARGH!!!!!!

This is driving me nuts. I can remember having something to write about just five mnutes ago but I can't for the life of me remember what it was! This happens a lot to me but it's especially annoying because I'm sure it was a really good idea and I'm also sure that either I'm going to remember it half way through writing this post or I'm going to remember it sometime after I go to bed, forcing me to wrestle with that great philosophical question of the ages:

“Is it worth turning on the light for?”

If I decide it is, I'll roll over, turn on my Pocket PC, spend a few seconds half-blinded by the back light, write it down and start trying to get to sleep again, from scratch.

If I decide it isn't, I'll be beating myself up for it the next morning, but at least I'll have enough energy to do so.

I'm funny like that.

Short post, no real reason. On the plus side, I've thought of several post ideas as I've written this and I may yet recall that original one that alluded me. It's either that or I never sleep again.



Also, it just happened again. Knew what I wanted to do at the start of that sentence, gone by the time I can bring up the Notes file.

See? Even Charles Babbage agrees with me.

There are some things in life that just confuse people. There are some people in life who just get confused by things. One of those things for many people is computers.

Anyone who's worked with computers will probably have nightmare stories of people who just can't grasp the simple fundamentals. The worst are undoubtedly those who can't grasp the fact that they can't grasp the simple fundamentals. The people who insist that they know what they're doing even as they complain that they don't know what “right clicking” is and tell you to stop using jargon. I thought I'd had a few horror stories myself, having spent entire lessons trying to get friends' Visual BASIC code to work (doesn't seem so impressive when you can't see the spelling mistakes). My personal favourite story to tell revolves around a small group people, kind of like a family. Let's call them “my parents”, “my brother” and “me”.

“My brother” and “me” had convinced my parents to buy a new computer, one which came with a scanner. Thanks to the twin miracles of colour coding and common sense, “my brother” and “me” had the computer up and running for the first time about twenty minutes after it was out of the box. Then “my parents” decided to help with the scanner, which had all of two cables. A little over an hour later, it too was running.

That sounded kind of whiny but I only bring it up because I've been reading some far worse tales of the computer user from hell. I recently discovered a website called Computer Stupidities. A lot of the tales on there are pretty old and my optimistic side likes to think that maybe now people are more likely to know the basics of a computer than people then. “Then” being the mid-90s. My pessimistic side says that people were, are now and always will be idiots. My realistic side didn't know which way to go until it read the quote on the front page:

“On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?'
In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.”
Charles Babbage

So, MPs, the people running the country in 1864 (and still today, I suppose, but not the same ones, I hope), couldn't grasp the concept of an adding machine. It's a sad, but not uncommon, day when my realist side agrees with my pessimist side. Still, if you know what you're doing with computers and you know people who don't, that website's worth a read.

I say this too much, but more tomorrow night when my arms don't ache from typing hundreds of words on the villainy of Iago.

“Technology advances quickly, people run behind, picking up the bits that fall off.”
Alasdair Corbett

Notes or not?

Don't expect anything much tonight, I've used most of my brain budget up over the last two days through a combination of Citizen Cane, podcasting, gaming, learning Othello quotations and not only studying for a Maths prelim but trying to teach the entire Higher Maths course to Sam.

Thus, I need some sleep. I need a lot of sleep. More than I'm likely to get over the next week or so. On the other hand, one of the many advantages of being arrogant is that I don't feel the need to study and so can spend the bulk of the Easter holidays sleeping. Except when I'm eating chocolate and watching Doctor Who.

I can't shake the feeling that I had something really profound and deep to write about earlier but it's pretty much gone now, so we'll just do a bit of random noting of things.

My Dad has pointed out, in reference to Tuesday's “Shakespeare gone bad” mentions that anything involving Iago saying “I love it when a plan comes together”, a la Hannibal, is comedy gold.

Woodle was late again this week. Again, time and laziness are the cause, mostly my lack of the former and over abundance of the latter. Skippy managed to get one up tonight, see below.

Photos of Citizen Cane, the Colossus of Troon still aren't up a) because I need to find some time and place to upload them, maybe Flickr if I can be bothered getting an account, b) I need to reduce the resolution a bit before webifying them and c) I want to put captions on a few. Might get some done tomorrow. Might not. It's not like people are clamouring for them.

Probably another short post tomorrow, English essay to do. Ever noticed how time seems to slow down as the holidays approach?

And that's the end of the notes, and the post.

Woodle: Hotel 1337

Art and writing by James Chalmers

How to waste time, by the true experts

Let me explain to you a sequence of events.

Step 1: At the start of Senior 1, I meet a young chap by the name of Samuel Stafford.

Step 2: Years later, he gets me to start a podcast with him. I agree.

Step 3: That podcast is rarely updated over a long period of time and both of us become frustrated at this.

Step 4: Sam suggests that, due to my crappy internet connection, we try to record the podcast not over Skype, but at my house.

Step 5: Sam arrives at my house. He, my little sister, Erin, and myself watch Remembrance of the Daleks.

Step 6: Sam notices a small device lying on my shelf. It's one of those little things where you pull a string out quickly and the disc on top goes flying off. He fools around with it and decides to take it downstairs.

Step 7: We all play Excite Truck. The room is too warm so we open the patio doors.

Step 8: My parents leave for Glasgow, my Mum tells us not to do anything stupid. We let Sam go outside. At the time, we didn't realise just how stupid that was. He takes the flying disc.

Step 9: We play with the flying disc device outside and, for fear of it landing on the roof in the wind, I suggest we go round to the front garden. Stupid.

Step 10: After a few successful tries around the front, Erin manages to get the disc lodged in a tree.

From here on in, the tale becomes much more convoluted but it ends up with this:



We couldn't get the disc down by shaking the tree so we brainstormed for other ideas. While Sam and I tried to get the hose to jet water up high enough (about 30 feet, needless to say it didn't work), Erin went to the sheds and begins construction on an insane contraption formed from Sellotape and garden canes. Our idea having failed, and Erin being scary when she's mad, Sam and I get drafted in.

We discover that the one cane after another approach won't work so we begin the long process of taping on more and more canes to the lower sections in order to make them stable enough for the height we needed. At this point, we moved from in front of the sheds to into the front drive. Given the final size of Citizen Cane, this proved to be a wise choice.

Sam wielding the masking tape, Erin the Sello variety and myself armed with two rolls of duct, we proceeded to spend several, I jest not, hours taping together canes, lifting them to test for structural strength and generally wondering whether we're ever going to get that disc out of the tree. Before my parents come home.

At one point, we even acquired an onlooker, who was walking through the field on the other side of the road. We say hello and continue to try to position this most unwieldy of pointing devices in such a way that it reaches and knocks the branch that the disc is on, hoping to make it fall out.

We succeed.

In knocking it on to another tree.

This tree, while lower down, is still to high for us to reach and too sturdy for us to shake down. However, it is closer so that the precision engineering that went into calculating the length of Citizen Cane (as it had by then been named) no longer worked. Further fiddling with the position of the base, which may or may not affect the position of the top, got the disc down a second time, and there was much rejoicing.

There was also much running around as my parents were expected back from Glasgow with my brother and we needed to tidy up all the tools and remaining canes (there weren't many) before they arrived. Curiously, we weren't all that concerned about how to conceal The Colossus of Troon. We ended up sticking it in my brother's window as far as it would go and leaving it for my parents to find. We dashed inside and only a few minutes later, the car pulled in the drive.

Many explanations and “looks-on-faces-that-you-really-should-have-seen” later, we got the cane down and stashed it more or less on top of the sheds at the back of the garden. Current long term plans include touring the country with it (Sam), religious worship of it (Erin) and poking things with it (me).

Ladies and gentlemen, I present Citizen Cane, 933cm of garden canes, sticky tape and passionate stupidity.



More photos and a woodle on the way tomorrow. Bear with me. Sam's still here. He's trying to juggle behind me. It's gonna be a long night.

On time

Time is something that seems to be slipping away lately. I've noticed that, as I age, I plan further into the future. Projects are planned for the months ahead rather than the days; a combination, perhaps, of my own procrastination and more pressing matters than tomorrow's homework, the plague of pre-teen years.

Every day is another test, another lesson of studying, another teacher saying “and that's the end of the course”. Another reminder that exams are are getting closer and the pressure is increasing.

I was remarking to Sam just a few minutes ago that I needed to write a blog post when he pointed out that it really shouldn't be a chore. I don't think it is, really, but it is something that preys upon my time this late at night. I suppose that I could be doing it, indeed, should be doing it earlier in the day but a lack of time and a hatred of any change to my “get in, load webcomics, get snack, watch DVD, do homework” habits make it more difficult than it really ought to be.

Then again, I find it hard to work without pressure. I leave homework to the last night, though I know people who leave it very literally to the last minute, so I suppose I'm not all that bad. I just can't create that pressure myself. That's really what this blog is, an experiment to see if I can push myself to use a chunk of my precious DVD watching time to make something seemingly creative on a regular schedule without outside pressures and goals.

Writes the boy with headphones round his ears and House sandwiched between NeoOffice and the desktop, a little to the left of Firefox. Funny, NeoOffice's spell checker recognises “firefox” as a word but not “NeoOffice”. Interestingly, though perhaps not as much funny as weird, the original version of the first sentence of this paragraph didn't contain that reference to the desktop, which I felt I wanted to add in to make it clear that I was talking about the computer's DVD player, but that meant that the tidbit about the spell checker made no sense. I didn't want to lie but I liked that second sentence, so I spent a few minutes restructuring that first sentence and then even more time writing out this explanation that probably makes the whole paragraph unwieldy.

Welcome to my mind.

All that, plus the editing I'll probably now do in the Blogger word processor, probably explains why these things take up so much of my time. But I'll keep on doing it anyway, because I want to and because I can. Also, tidbit isn't in the spell checker either. I'm gonna have to sort that.

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
Bertrand Russell

“Having Quotes of the Day on your Google homepage can help make you seem a lot smarter than you actually are.”
Alasdair Corbett

Brian Christ, this is your life

A few days ago, I saw a documentary about Monty Python's Life of Brian and the struggles the Python team faced in getting the film funded and shown due to it being a send-up of religious beliefs.

At the time nothing like it had ever been done. There was a bit of comedy about God (“'Course it's a good idea!”) in Holy Grail and other places but a mockery of the life of Jesus (as it was thought of by many) and organised religion in general (as was the Pythons greater intention) had never been done before, surprising as it may be in today's world where you'd be hard pressed to find a major religious figure who isn't a supporting character in The Simpsons, Family Guy or half a dozen webcomics.

The number of people who stood against it was incredible. Mary Whitehouse (who stood against anything which was aired on television between midnight and 23:59) criticised it and her campaign managed to get town councils to ban it, even though they openly admitted to never having seen it. The stupidity spread quickly to America, where huge crowds gathered to protest against a film that they knew nothing about, before it had even premiered.

John Cleese and Michael Palin had a discussion with the Bishop of Southwark and Malcolm Muggeridge about it on some television discussion show, where the whole crux of their argument relied on their having missed the first 15 minutes of the film. It was such a ridiculous thing to watch, as I did on the documentary I mentioned, that it's often even funnier than the Not the Nine O'Clock News' spoof of the entire thing that aired mere days later.

I guess it was this that got me thinking about religion and much of the hypocrisy that surrounds it. I've never been a particularly religious person. In fact, the only time I've ever been to any kind of religious service it's been a social thing (and even then, not without much moaning), the school Christmas service or a little cousin's Christening, that sort of thing. Really, I am best described as an atheist. But I digress.

The whole Python thing made me wonder, what if there was an accurate account of the Bible made and shown to people on television and cinemas?

Jesus' mother gets pregnant without any involvement from her husband. Jesus, who's technically a bastard, is born and many babies are killed because of it. Jesus grows up. Once he's older Jesus is sentenced to death, nailed to a couple of wooden planks and left to die while people gamble for his clothes. Some other people die because of this, I think. Or maybe some criminals die. I can't really remember. Anyway, Jesus, because of his powerful and influential dad, comes back to life as a zombie and scares the crap his friends. The apocalypse happens. The End.

Can you see that being made into a film which Christians would like? No, they'd hate it. In fact, from what I know of that Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, they did. Even if they didn't do their best to stop it completely, it wouldn't be shown until long after the watershed and it would have an 18 certificate quite rightly slapped on it before it reached your local Odeon.

The same can be said of any religion when someone makes a point about them. Indeed, that was the point of Life of Brian, to mock organised religion more than anything else. I'm picking on Christianity here because they're used to it, Python and everybody else has softened them up, to a degree.

Basically, my point is this. Look at that brief summary of the the story of Christ. Now compare it to the plot of Life of Brian. Which would you rather let children see? And yet, one was banned in countries around the world, given a 15 rating where it was released and the other is presented to little children as inspirational.

This situation is unlikely to change any time soon but somehow, I can see it happening. If you've read any literature from the Victorian era and before, perhaps even into the mid-twentieth century, you'll probably have come across various biblical references that everyone would have understood at the time but which are lost on most people today. Perhaps in another few hundred years no one will see why Life of Brian was so funny or be able to figure out who that big bearded guy talking to Homer Simpson in those museum displays is.

I can't really think of a way to round this off neatly as I have a lot to say on the subject but, as this is probably my longest post yet, I'll finish with this. Read the words of Jack Thompson. This man is a prime example of stupidity in the name of religion.

New Word Thursday: 'leauscrit'

leauscrit [Lu-skr-eete]
noun | adverb
1. To write or draw by dragging a finger across water that has condensed on glass. Used often on car or bus windows to send inverted messages to other motorists.
Also: Leauscriter & Leauscriting
''He is such a leauscriter."
"Strike me pink! Look at that devious leauscrit!"
"I am leauscriting on this window now"

ORIGIN Modern English : Derived from 'l'eau' French for Water ('leau') and ('scrit') is derived from the Portugese 'escrita', for 'writing'.

Inane ramblings of a grumpy cynic at midnight

WARNING: The following is an incoherent bunch of poorly thought out ranting. Why? Because I'm in a hurry, I'm tired and I'm angry. Something better tomorrow. I highly recommend that you don't read this.


Rattling off a very quick blog post right now not because I need to get to sleep but because I need to get it done before I do yet another Computing presentation, this time on 3 types of rare and useless display technologies, some of which may enter common usage within the next 20 or so years.

I got various bit of bumf from the SQA, the people in charge of the future of Scotland's children, today, regarding my exams in May. These little leaflets bug me for reasons I shall now proceed to explain, hopefully in less than five minutes of typing.

1.“You must not use text language in any of your answers”

I think what they're getting at here is that you cannot write an essay using phrases such as “OMFG i thnk Othello rox. Cn i have a A? Kk thanx bye”. I would love to see the written answers which made someone feel that this was a necessary rule. I would not like to meet the person who wrote those answers.

I said that I “think” that's what they mean, because the only other interpretation is that I'm not allowed to use written communication to show my answers. This leaves recording (but no recording equipment can be taken into the exam room) and possibly some forms of pictograph, if they aren't picky.

2.The people in all the photos

Could they look more artificial if they tried? Every single one of the people in these photos is smiling and most of them are of ethnic minorities. Don't misinterpret that. It's not a racist thing. I just don't like the idea that a photographer or someone else has gone around specifically to look for people with different skin colours in order to avoid the slim possibility of being sued for something.

It also bugs me that none of these people are doing anything remotely relevant. There's a few people apparently doing exams but everyone else is just standing around in the open air or banging their heads together above the camera. Why? Why, I ask you, why?!

It also doesn't help that the people chosen to go on the cover of one of the booklets are hardly front cover material. Now, I'm sure these people may well be nice enough in real life if I ever met them (assuming they've never read this next bit) but that doesn't mean I want to look at them. One has a bucktoothed grin that makes her look as if she's been photographed mid-hiccup and the other is a particularly gormless looking acne-riddled young man with his jaw hanging open and half his eyebrow missing.

Now, not to be mean, but I don't want to look at these people. I don't pretend to look any better but that doesn't mean I want to see them every time I need exam information. And I'm fairly sure cameras can take more than one photo, so why, a word that keeps coming up, didn't they take another one where the two people don't look like brainless zombies? I'm serious. I can picture a speech balloon next to eyebrow boy saying “Brains!!!”

3.The exam timetable

Maths and Physics are on consecutive days. This really is a complaint. It's one of those things that I've mentioned before that could be corrected if people's thought processes didn't go like this:

“Nobody who does Physics could possibly be doing Maths as well, since they're totally unrelated. I'll put them next to each other so the people doing Urdu for Non-native Speakers have a few days to study before their inevitable Biology exam.”

Yeah, I'm a grumpy cynical bastard. But seriously, does anybody think this thing through? This really has been a rant and a long one at that. I apologise. But I'm still think there's way too much crappy bumf (best phrase in this whole post) in the world.

Shakespeare gone bad

A little comedy post today, since I'm in that kind of mood.

Imagine, if you will, a Shakespeare play. It could be Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, whatever.

Now, imagine an old TV show. Not really old. 70s, 80s maybe. Something like Transformers, The A-Team or Starsky and Hutch.

Now, combine the two and imagine the results.

Done? Good. This is the kind of thing that stems from the conversations I have with my friends. It started out as an alternative to actually paying attention to the ball during a PE lesson of short tennis, where we imagined Mr T. in the title role of Othello, a general of Venice and one of Shakespeare's greatest tragic heroes.

Duke of Venice: Th'affair cries haste,
And speed must answer it. You must hence tonight.
Othello: I ain't getting' on no plane, your Excellency!

After having been exposed to my other friends over lunch, we created things that will haunt the nightmares of any English teacher. Romeo and Hutch (with Huggy Bear as Friar Lawrence), Teenage Mutant Ninja Hamlet and any kind of crossover between A Midsummer Night's Dream and Transformers were all fine by us.

The possibilities abound. Macbeth meets MacGyver. Much Ado About Airwolf. Twelfth Knight Rider. The Merchant of U.N.C.L.E..

For future reference, I didn't know that quote above off by heart. I'm not that much of a literary maniac. However, I am enough of one to go and look up the phrase “off by heart”, which is actually quite interesting, it seems. I'm going to have to look into that. Some other time. After sleep.

Past the Powerpoint of no return...

Working on a set of Chemistry questions. Writing an English essay on whether or not Iago, villain of Othello, is a “motiveless malignity”. Creating a, still uncompleted, Computing presentation on the many uses of processors. Avoiding studying for a Maths test. Playing Sonic Adventure 2 Battle when I really should have been doing all of the above.

Well, that's how my evening went. Curiously, on one of the few times that I start writing one of these things before about 25 to midnight, I'm pretty much out of ideas and energy. Still, that's never stopped any blogger before now, so why should it stop me?

That English essay has actually got me thinking. Not about Shakespeare really, but about writing. I've decided that I do not, in general, like writing. I do not enjoy it, as a task. Which begs the question (not in the original sense of “begs the question”, which had more to do with circular logic, but I claim the rights of common usage), why do I do it? Why, when I'm sitting here with my left arm aching, am I still sitting here, writing this blog?

There are two possibilities. The first is that, while writing itself is not a task I enjoy, writing down my thoughts and ideas is. To illustrate that point, think of all the things you've ever had to write down. Essays, character studies, test answers, memos, critical evaluations of mid-to-late 19th century literature. I'm willing to say with confidence that you didn't enjoy writing down any of those things. It may not have been a horrible torture (excluding the 19th century literature) but nor was it what you would call enjoyable.

(The second reason is that I'm mad, but I don't like the implications of that so I'm going to stick with my first train of thought.)

I've often thought that, throughout the years I've been doing English as a school subject, one which consists mainly of pretending everything is as brilliant as Shakespeare and trying to get 20 marks worth of answers out of 10 line poems, I've been assigned to do many things. I've often thought that my best writing, my personal favourites, be they fiction or factual, are on topics that I like or get to choose. I hate having to force myself to write about one particular thing and I'll never be happy with the final result, except for the big grin that comes over my face when the final page prints and I can stick it in my doodle-covered folder.

I'm not saying I'm a great writer, but I can enjoy it when I get to choose what to write down. Most people are like that, in one way or another. Force them into doing something and they'll usually be against it. Ask them to do the exact same thing and they're far more likely to comply and enjoy whatever there is to enjoy. Or maybe it's just me.

Anyway, I've now completely overspent my daily allowance of competence, creativity and cognitive functioning so I'm gonna go make a Powerpoint presentation.

Doorways in the desert would be worse...

I'm in a bad mood, so this is likely to turn into something of a rant, just so you know.

I generally consider myself a logical person. Not exactly Mister Spock logical, but when I make a decision or do something, I like to have thought it through rationally and logically. Or at least, I like to think that I've thought it through.

So, something that really bugs me are things that aren't thought through. Things that aren't considered but done simply because they're done. These are things that, if you took a second and looked at them calmly and rationally, make no sense. But people do them anyway and people don't like to be told that their actions are nonsensical.

Let's take an example: if you've ever been in a place with a lot of people and a lot of corridors then you'll recognise this, even if you've never considered it before. People who stand in doorways. People who, instead of going anywhere else, stand in a doorway, the one area that others will certainly have to go through. A few seconds would tell you that this habit is inconvenient for everyone involved. And yet, if you try to get past them, they'll mutter and complain as you push through their little group.

This is like going to the Sahara and complaining about all that sand. It's stupid. A lot of people realise it's stupid. And everybody still does it.

Now, this happens a lot to me. I'll be annoyed for a little while after I've pushed past. I'll think how stupid it was and how much better it would be if people just found somewhere sensible to stand. And then I'll forget about it. But now, sitting here, being annoyed, it comes to the surface of my mind.

So, I ask of you, the next time you need somewhere to stand, choose somewhere sensible. Nobody will notice it but maybe you'll feel a little bit better about yourself for making the world ever so slightly better.

Also, if you don't like sand, don't go to the Sahara. Just thought I'd point that out.

Woodle: Off at the Last Stop

Drawn by James Chalmers, original concept by James Chalmers, tinkered with by Alasdair Corbett.

A few notes without an ending

Well, that's the last episode of the show up and done. It's a shame that it has to end after a year, but as a full member of the League of Awesomeness now, I'm sure Ze Frank will come up with something new to keep the masses entertained.

The best kinds of endings are the ones that are planned and expected, built up to and respected. The end of the show was one of these, it was always a one year only thing. Many TV shows (and podcasts, blogs and everything else you may care to consider) have bad endings or no proper ending at all because they are expected to just go on and on. If you're lucky then the writers have had a season or so to build up to it. Films are different, they're limited. They have to have a proper ending and if they don't, it can ruin the whole thing (I'm looking at you, second film of every trilogy ever made).

I haven't really planned this out too far so I'm just gonna mention a few little things instead of trying to think.

The post is kind of late tonight, even though I promised myself I'd get it done earlier and work on that post I've been meaning to make for days.

Speaking of days, it's worth mentioning that we're now well into the second week of challenge.exe. Another 50 to go before I take a break, though I doubt I'll end it. I enjoy it too much.

You'll have noticed there was no woodle today. That was just due to general busyness on all sides and I wasn't even able to come up with a stopgap solution because trying to get a screenshot of a DVD is ridiculously hard and overcomplicated.

Skippy hasn't been posting much lately for the same reason as the woodle's not up: busyness. I'm not sure entirely what he's busy with but he seems to be doing it a lot and instead of sleeping.

Well, that wraps that up. Something bigger tomorrow, I think, for those of you who bother to show up. An average of about 37.0909 recurring people per day, give or take.

iWish, iWish, iWish iWoz iWoz

I've been reading a book lately, iWoz. It's Steve Wozniak's autobiography, that's Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, chip designing whiz, though Woz may be the more appropriate term, and creator of the Apple I and II and, of course, Breakout. Also, he created the first Dial-A-Joke line in the San Francisco Bay area, a fact for which he wishes he got more credit.

Now, many people won't have heard of Wozniak and many of those who have may not know just how far reaching his inventions were. Now, Wozniak created the Apple I, a computer which was revolutionary at the time. Why? It had a keyboard and a monitor. It was small, cheap, fast, far faster than most other machines at the time, but the truly great thing was that it hooked up with a glorified typewriter and a TV.

I haven't read far enough through the book to the point where he and Steve Jobs created Apple and got around to distributing it and changing the world and whatnot, so I'm not going to go into the events of then. But think about it. Picture any old sci-fi movie, picture early Star Trek. Computers of the future were operated like computers of the day, if such things existed. Switches, lights, the occasional dial. If it were a truly top of the line, super-duper computer it might have a few reels of magnetic tape twirling back and forth. Trying to operate the weapons on the Enterprise was not unlike setting your Christmas tree to stun.

All computers were like that then. Switches for input, blinking lights for output. Nobody had though of combining it with a display, nothing beyond the occasional home Pong game (which, interestingly, Steve Wozniak produced a simple version of, which he connected to his TV, over a year before Atari did it). Heck, the Enterprise had a giant freaking screen, right there. Huge. Directly in front of Kirk. What did it show? A giant screen-saver and the odd Klingon. Not even the wildest imaginations of the time had put two and two together. And Wozniak did.

It's like the Post-it note, and I don't say that to trivialise it. You all know how highly I regard Post-it notes. Such a simple idea, though technical, which combined existing parts to make something new. Something incredible. Something which is now the basis of so many things, even much of civilisation itself relies on these little boxes, all descended from that Apple I, made just a few decades ago.

I wonder what it's like to look around and see something you created taking over the world?

And they said I would run out of topics...

I was struggling for something to write about tonight, as too much procrastination has again left me with precious little typing time. So, I looked along the bottom of my iMac, the bit beneath the screen at the myriad of Post-it notes (and yes, that's the right way to write it; I checked) that accumulate down there whenever I have a random thought.

As big a fan of little electronic notes as I am, I still believe that nothing beats a little scrap of paper for jotting down and working out ideas. Sure, it's a little easier to read when it's typed in and so I'll never find a note like the one in front of me which reads “Research possible e-steroids for flanagus” but nothing beats being able to just grab a sheet and scrawl down notes.

My Pocket PC is a relatively acceptable substitute because it turns on quickly enough but when an idea seems really fleeting, I always like to use a piece of paper rather than a keyboard and a word processor, even something designed for quick note-taking.

It makes me marvel at the simplicity of the little Post-its in front of me and at the ingenuity of people in their use. Little more than coloured paper with some funny glue, these things have been used to hold great ideas, illegible phone numbers, usernames and passwords, reminders (I have one stuck to my bedroom door to remind me to look for a Physics book before I leave tomorrow) and anything else that needs to be seen and remembered. Or made into tiny little paper planes.

Something so simple has become so commonplace that life without it, hardly considered by people who talk of going without mobile phones, or computers, or cars, is unthinkable. Like the paperclip, the clothes hanger and the rubber band, the Post-it note is surely one of humanity's greatest inventions. And I say that in all seriousness.

Image: This was going to be of that "flanagus" Post-it but I could only take it with my iSight camera and it came in mirrored. Then you couldn't see the words and since I didn't have Photoshop working yet, I fiddled around in iPhoto. Behold, the result.

New Word Thursday: 'interwarble'

Interwarble [Inter-warble]
verb | adverb
1. The persistent (but well meaning) reminding or nagging, via an electronic medium such as Instant Messenger or Email:
'I have 40 new IM messages from mum. She's started to interwarble about my job interview.'
'Yes Dad, you've begun interwarbling, you big interwarbler. Us country folk don't go running to the doctor with every sneeze, sniffle or broken bone!'


ORIGIN Modern English : Derived from the word internet ('inter') and warble ('warble') which is characteristic of nagging behavior.

Humour, Act 1

Ever seen something that's probably not meant to be funny and probably isn't to anyone else? Take this sentence, for instance, from the Wikipedia article on Duke Nukem Forever:

“On March 21, 2006, 3D Realms CEO Scott Miller stated that when Forever was finished, 3D Realms would begin work on a sequel.”

Get the joke? A sequel at the end of forever? I honestly believe that whoever wrote this is either a comic genius who has somehow made his humour slip under pickier editors radars or it's a huge coincidence. I'd prefer the former but the latter still works because it's humour that I can laugh at and very few others can, until I explain the wordplay, explain the vapourware nature of Duke Nukem Forever and even then it may only get the merest chuckle.

I love humour like this. There's such a natural-ness to it. I don't really know how else to describe it. It's being funny not because you're expected to be, or because you're trying to be, it's just being funny because you think of something that makes you happy and you say it and if other people laugh then that's good and if they don't then it doesn't matter. It's humour without a message, funny without being forced.

I can't stand fake humour. I can't stand laugh track humour or with-a-gag-a-second-we-don't-need-a-plot TV shows. It's why I no longer find Family Guy funny and why I love stuff like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the Discworld books. It's humour that, it seems to me at the very least, the writers don't care if you find funny. It's not gags and one-liner comebacks that could be in any show, any book, any plot. It's funny people writing funny things because they can, because they enjoy it. Sure, it might be a job, but you like to think that they'd do that job whether they had to or not.

I've been thinking for a few minutes about what it is I'm trying to say here and to be honest, I'm really not sure myself. I'm just tossing thoughts out there and seeing where they land and what they hit. I have many thoughts on humour just waiting to be hurled at random passers by. Maybe I'll write about them another day. For now, I leave you with this garbled mess and tell you that I have to go do a presentation for Computing tomorrow. I've said before that I like having a hectic schedule. Can't get much more hectic than homework at half... heleven.

Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot, Golf?

The Official U.S Military alphabet reads as such:
Alpha
Bravo
Charlie
Delta
Echo
Foxtrot
Golf
Hotel
India
Juliet
Kilo
Lima
....

Okay I've read enough. My short point tonight is, why on earth would an American soldier first associate the letter L with the word 'Lima'?

There's Looney, Loopy, Latex, Lozenge, Labor, Labial consonant, Lab, Lackey or even Love if they were running out of ideas! (Google also suggested: L'Oreal, but... nah.)

On second thoughts. Lima is good. Yeah, lets keep Lima.

Touche.

Image: Who said Physics was boring? Its spaghetti-crazy-town. Alasdair was just to the top left of this picture. He was having a I-know-what-I'm-doing day, more on that and fluctuating readings later, when I write a comprehendible post.

Crud, I've already referenced Shakespeare in a title

I really need to stop doing these so late. Skippy (who I'm convinced is the only one who actually reads these) says they're good or funny and if I prod the people around me in Computing enough, they mumble their amusement. Still, I feel like I could be doing much better but, alas, not tonight. For you see it is now, as I type this, almost 20 to 12, meaning I have 20 minutes to come up with a topic, write it and upload if I am to adhere to challenge.exe. See that? That was self-referencing. I hope to do it a lot more once I've built up a bit more self to reference.

Anyway, the reason for my lateness tonight is a fairly simple one. English homework. More specifically, an essay on Act 3, Scene 3 of ((Othello)) detailing the techniques used my Iago to manipulate the titular character and his subsequent change in personality. Sounds dull, doesn't it? It's not aided by the fact that I was off school the day we were told what to do and by the fact that it was technically due on Monday. Various circumstances have allowed me to keep putting it off till tonight, when I dutifully spent several hours alternating between typing a paragraph, reading a webcomic (added about three or four more newish ones to my big list of ones that I check for updates and I'm in the middle of another's archives) and just generally slacking off.

All this has led me to one conclusion. I don't like writing. Nobody does, or at least nobody should. I like thinking. I can come up with ideas for comic strips, blog posts, essays on Shakespearean literature, who knows what else, but I very rarely sit down to type it all up, because the process is quite a tedious one to me.

Perhaps it's more the tedium of the subject as I find myself enjoying this little mini-essay of my own topic to be more enjoyable than any essay that's ever really been directly assigned to me for any purpose.

Then again, perhaps it's simply the principle of the thing. I consider myself as having taken procrastination to the level of an art form. I can put off anything until the last minute and still, quite amazingly and in ways I don't quite understand, pull it off. Usually. I get the impression that this English essay, put off too long after having read the section, may be a load of drivel. Of course, I believe that about every English I've ever written, I've just normally managed to write drivel that matches up with the drivel on the answer grid.

I'm really not a huge fan of English as a subject. It seems that I'm very often looking for meaning in passages and sentences where there are none, assigning oceans of depth to puddles of mediocrity and giving words far more weight than they can possibly bare.

I could rant and rave on my problems with English lessons and teaching for hours and, assuming I don't have any more essays for a little while, I may well do at some point. For now, suffice it to say that I consider Skippy, the only one in our year to have completely dropped all things English, a wise and lucky bastard.

Actually, I've come to a conclusion, a curious thing for me to do. I like this whole, train of though, writing whatever pops into my head style of writing. With any luck I can develop the whole writing scripts thing because, as I've said an embarrassing number of times before, I do want to write this blasted comic. I hate writing that someone else has told me to do, that doesn't make sense to me and that isn't about something I enjoy. Thinking back over the years, most of the best writing I've ever done at school was on a topic I either picked or enjoyed.

Crud, 5 minutes to. Time to wrap this up, methinks. If anybody but Skippy reads this, write a comment. If Skippy reads this, write an actual blog post, you wise, lucky, lazy bastard.

Chemistry is exhausting

No, this isn't that post I've been supposedly delaying for days. Yes, it will be typed up eventually. No, it probably won't be tomorrow. Happy? Good. Then, if you're sitting comfortably, we can begin.

I spent most of today not sitting comfortably. I spent about 4 hours in the back seat of a car and about 3 hours and 45 minutes standing around titrating things, mixing solutions and generally doing overcomplicated chemistry. This doesn't include the countless minutes spent wandering the halls of Heriot-Watt University trying to figure out where I was, where I was meant to be and where some of my erstwhile companions where. Such is the way of the Royal Society of Chemistry's Analytical Chemistry Competition, Scottish heat.

This whole experience is probably one of those ones that I'll look back fondly on in a few years time despite the fact that we lost and everyone spent the whole day being kind of cranky. I'll remember one of my team mates, while saying he was really starting to get the hang of using this equipment, trying to fix on a pipette sucker thing backwards. It was funnier at the time.

I'll remember the fact that I now have a vendetta against vitamin C and that you know you're in a room full of chemists when you here someone calculating the concentrations of various substances in your Ribena carton.

In all likelihood I won't remember the boredom of the car journeys, the awkwardness of various social bits (actually, I can see the whole socially awkward teenage years haunting me for the whole of my life, but who cares, I'm on a roll here) and that odd feeling in the pit of your stomach when you think you've broken a very expensive looking UV spectrometer.

All this has been a long-winded way of saying that memory is a tricky thing and that I'm very tired. Me go sleep now.

On an unrelated note, I'm currently taking Physics and Chemistry at Higher. I'm going to take Advanced Higher Physics.

Again, time is not on my side

I apologise again that this isn't the post I had planned for tonight. This was originally going to be a post that was delayed from yesterday but, owing to the fact that I am being rushed to bed because of a need to get up early tomorrow morning, I don't really have the time to write it out.

As I sit here, I have an iMac in front of me, a Pocket PC and an old laptop to my left and an external hard drive to my right. The whirring of the hard drive indicates that it is progressing in its task of moving several hundred megabytes of files, taken from the iMac, on to the laptop, from where they can be put on the PPC's SD card. And that's just on one desk. I am the uber-geek. P|-|34r me.

Sorry, reading too many early Megatokyo strips recently. Anyway, all this transferring from stationary to portable (the laptop hasn't been portable since my brother spilled water on it several years ago and fried the battery) is in preparation for a journey tomorrow up to Edinburgh for a Chemistry competition. The excitement never stops, huh?

Trying to find a meaning in this post has led me to think about just how dependent I am on gadgetry for my entertainment. I am rarely without either my Pocket PC or my DS and even then I tend to have my Game Boy micro fully charged and waiting in my pocket. Curiously, I have got by as a gadget freak without a mobile phone. I still don't know where I'm going with this post, other than making the point that if I'd lived in the past, I would have spent most of my life being bored out of my skull.

This post has kind of been about me but I promise I'll have some musings on a completely different topic tomorrow. Unless I feel like ranting about the Chemistry stuff. And if I manage to get that English essay I need to do written. Weird as it may seem, I kind of like working under this unpredictable self-scheduling thing. But that's a post for another time.

Blasted linear time!

Today's post is going to be a rather short one as midnight draws ever closer. I have a topic which I will no doubt touch upon tomorrow and I was halfway through writing the post when I realised that I couldn't do it justice in a mere fifteen minutes of hurried typing. I really need to start doing these things earlier in the day. The same often applies to my homework.

As a quick aside, today's Woodle, found below, is drawn by Sam Stafford, who will be paid the princely sum of £1 for his efforts, and written, again, by myself. I have plans for these “Negotiation” comics. And webcomicking in general. I've touched on this before and certainly will do so again in the future, but I really like webcomics and I'm planning to do one of my own, or at the very least write it, owing to my total lack of artistic talent. Maybe I'll find something I've scanned in and put that up as today's image. Unfortunately, you won't be reading this if I do, because you'll go blind.

Like I said, this post is pretty hurried. I will try to avoid them but life often gives you what you try to avoid. My personal theory is that the universe is simply a very advanced Sims game, played by God an "intelligent designer" (can't piss off the pseudo-scientists, now, can we?). Everyone loves torturing their sims from time to time, right?

Image: Nah, decided against it.

Woodle: What not to say during international negotiations